This is a past event
Join us to hear from three of our current PhD students about their research.
Efrat Berestizhevsky
Efrat Berestizhevsky is a pianist and researcher in her second year of the Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology program under the supervision of Professor Edward Campbell at the University of Aberdeen. Her research revolves around the intersection of music and visual art of the 20th and 21st century. More specifically, she is focused on the translation of techniques, concepts, or philosophies between the two media.
In Pursuit of Time: How Paul Klee and Frantisek Kupka employ musical concepts to paint temporality
It is my contention that visual artists and composers from the 20th century share a bank of concepts and techniques that is constantly in flux, changed either by introduction of new artistic techniques or musical ones. It is in the application of these shared concepts where my interest lies. With the painters Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957) and Paul Klee (1879-1940), I will demonstrate how both artists derived artistic ideas from music but used them in different ways. I will first contextualize the argument of medium specificity which outlines what are arguably medium-defining qualities of visual art and whether artists should go attempt to go beyond their medium, as philosopher Noël Carroll states, or if artists should remain staunchly within their two-dimensional canvas, as art critic Clement Greenberg states.
I argue that by using music compositional techniques such as harmonic progression, ornamentation, and successive elements, Kupka and Klee find a balance between these two opposing sides of specificity. This shared bank of concepts however, utilized in different ways, allows Kupka to have more a smoother space and Klee to have a more structured one. What both artists achieve is the experience of moving time through a static field.
Junqiong Guan
Junqiong Guan is currently a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music (2015-22). During this period, she was awarded scholarships every year, and has published four papers, given a piano concert, and a 45-minute teaching demonstration. She began her PhD in 2023, supported by The Ogston Postgraduate Music Scholarship. Her area of doctoral research is the recent history of out-of-school graded music examinations, focussing on China from 1978 to 2018. The dissertation seeks to understand why there was a boom in graded music exams during this period and what the experience of sitting grade exams was like for learners and teachers.
Attitudes and reasons for taking graded piano exams in China
My PhD explores the history of graded piano examination in China between 1978 and 2018. That is, between the implementation of the Reform and Opening Up policy in 1978 and the huge change in the mode of running graded music exams as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period there was a phenomenal growth in the Chinese market for graded piano exams. Combining research into music education in China and the international history of graded music exams, my study seeks to understand Chinese graded piano exams in this period at three levels.
The first of these levels is national, the level of Chinese society. This study uses a synthesis of information from secondary sources to explore the history of the graded music exam and how it came to China. The second level is that of institutions. It introduces four institutions that offer graded music exams and provides a comparative analysis of their syllabi to explore what changed in the period. The third level is that of the individual. Here, this study uses the semi-structured interview method to collect data, followed by a thematic analysis of the interview information to elucidate the motivations of those involved in graded music exams as well as the detail of how graded piano exams operated. In addition to these three levels, this study places graded music (especially piano) exams in a broader context of graded dance, guzheng, and art exams.
For this presentation, I will introduce the chapter on interviews. In this chapter, I describe how I found my interviewees and discuss what they said in their interviews. I will focus on one of the themes that emerged from my analysis of the interview data: the attitudes towards and reasons for taking graded piano exams. Regarding whether to take piano exams, piano teachers and students hold three attitudes respectively, and parents of students hold two attitudes. The reasons for candidates taking the exam are complicated, teachers have six reasons, students have seven reasons, and parents have four reasons. In addition, the financial situation of the family was also one of the most important reasons why candidates were able to take the exams.
Jingjie Xu
Jingjie Xu graduated from East China Normal University in music education in 2018, obtaining a master in music performance from the University of Birmingham in 2020.Jingjie is currently a 2nd year PhD student at the university of Aberdeen, researching in the field of French Exotic Opera.Jingjie is also trained as a classical opera singer, performing in works such as Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Così fan tutte. She hold solo concerts in the USA (2017), UK (2019) and China（2020）and participated in China's National Social Science Foundation's Art Studies Programme during 2017-2020.
The rise of Egyptian exoticism in French opera during the Belle Époque
In the nineteenth century, musical exoticism was well known to French audiences, and Egypt became one of the favoured backdrops for French operatic composition. With reference to six operas (some well-known, some less so), my PhD project explores how French ideas of and reactions to exoticism changed during the Belle Époque (1871-1914), especially as reflected in Egyptian exoticism. Three themes are central to this enquiry: landscape, religion, and love.
In this paper I present two aspects of my work to date. Firstly, by distilling and integrating previous musicological, sociological, and literary research, I am able to explain, and expand upon keywords such as musical exoticism, exoticism- Orientalism, and Egyptomania. Secondly, I draw on Algirdas Julien Greimas’ semiotic theory of deep structure to support a form of operatic analysis that shows how opposition operates within the deep structure of each work by examining the contribution of text, music, plots, costumes, and stage settings to the shaping of larger-scale binaries. Put together, this work demonstrates how French composers of the period expressed the French Egyptian exoticism through multimedia combinations of the various arts.
- Venue
- MacRobert Building, MR055
- Contact
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If you would like to attend this event via teams, please email Dr Christina Ballico (Department of Music): christina.ballico@abdn.ac.uk.